문학번역과 묵시적 정보

Literary translation and implicit information : focusing on Ambrose Bierce s The Boarded Window with a relevance theoretical approach

When we say the impossibility or difficulty of literary translation, we often mention literariness as its reason. The literariness may mean a theme, a plot, a style, a tone, a character, an author’s perspective, or an exotic element. One more element may be density, which convey “a richness of ideas, feelings and impressions that are not necessarily expressed in words, but communicated implicitly.” These constitute implicit information. Yet, implicit information in literary texts may not be conveyed by the text alone but may rely on the inferential combination of the text with a context. These peculiar properties of implicatures are of crucial importance of literariness and create poetic effects on literary texts by allowing the varying interpretations and stimulating reader’s imagination. This paper aims to investigate how the implicit information may be changed in the process of translation and raise the awareness of context which is essential in translating literary texts. For this purpose, it looks at relevance theory and analyzes Korean translation of American writer Ambrose Bierce s The Boarded Window.